


New Slang

by jfk



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen, Nightmares, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-02-02
Updated: 2011-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-15 07:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/158601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jfk/pseuds/jfk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John can't sleep, neither can Sherlock. But for very different reasons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. mercy's eyes are blue

**Author's Note:**

> [It's sherlock who is dreaming at the beginning. His dream sequences do not contain capitalisation purposefully.]

_  
everything and nothing was infinite with sherlock as he was beneath the stars. he cared little for them, as bright as they may have shone it seemed as if a dullness shrouded them. that was john's fault. john was under the stars too, shoulder to shoulder the grave. six feet deep and four feet wide with earthy walls, dark as the stars, damp as though it were crying. the taste of ash, blood and a curse for those strange stars were all in his mouth, and sherlock didn't know how they got out. when they did, though, he looked over at john anxiously, who was pale. bathing in the chlorine of the stars, a host of sherlock's individual sin._

 _  
_

" _you're cold,” sherlock told him._

 _  
_

_“so are you.” john spoke through someone elses voice, the words tumbling out like a mouthful of crimson, so natural and yet so bile-enducing. like a new slang when he'd noticed sherlock's icy hands move towards his own._

 _  
_

_“i was always cold, john.” sherlock snapped, quickly. once more, his cold hands moved with a defiance of their own, and john resisted him as if her were a serpent in the grass. sherlock's aghast face turned ugly. “i was always cold. but you-...you're-”_

 _  
_

_john had never been this cold before. colourless. his eyes were black now, swallowing sherlock whole with a look of fury. furious dark eyes, because mercy had blue eyes._

 _  
_

_“i hope that's right when you die, old and bony.” all the air rushed from sherlock's lungs as the sky before him fell apart. he was gasping, grabbing desperately at john's image, but the grave was being filled by the muddy earth, dark as the stars, damp as if it were crying. the blood of the earth choked sherlock until there was nothing left but the noise of everything and nothing, dying._

 _  
_

-

 

The sound of a bow running across strings in an evil hiss was what woke John, to begin with.

  
The strings were of a violin, Sherlock's violin, and that meant only one thing.

  
Sherlock was thinking.

 

This wasn't a problem, only...Sherlock was a loud thinker. Even after the violin had been put away there was something about the thought of his mind ticking like a clock constantly that-  
well, no one person could ignore it.  
Or stand it. Or sleep with the thought of that whirring in the next room.

 

But for around seven minutes it wasn't the thinking that really bothered John too much; it was the violin. The sound was murderous, and sinister to the ears. And While Sherlock could play well (John had heard him play a few beautiful pieces on nights not unlike that one), it seemed he was insisting on making the sound raw and ugly. No worse sound in the world than somebody who can't play the violin insisting on doing so anyway.

 

After a while, he heard the something snapping, something wooden cleanly being wrent in twain.  
Then thrown against the violin. John knew because the force was transferred into noise.

 

There was grumbling, quite a bit of grumbling, and John could hear Sherlock pacing (his shoes were still on), before stopping. Presumably by the mantle, as he was talking, and it was most likely to Yorick.

 

By this time John was past hope of falling asleep. In fact, he was sat up, and trying to decipher what exactly was going on. Though, he didn't want to disturb Sherlock, that would have killed the fun of it.

 

More footsteps. This time to the bathroom, where the was a hollow click, followed by rustling. John knew.

 

At least, he could deduce. Not like Sherlock could, but given the circumstances of that night, John knew. There had not been an interesting case for Sherlock in at least a fortnight. Not a single mention from Lestrade. Even with the lack of case work, Sherlock had not eaten, and with every day that was passing the amount of nicotine patches on his arms grew.

 

At first, there were three.  
In total, there were eight on his arms.

John knew there were many more, but they were out of sight.

 

And then...  
Well, then there was the medicine cabinets, and the late-night trips out to 'get some milk'.  
He had been wincing the last twelve nights away. (John could guess that not only was Sherlock probably starving and dehydrated, but also critically deprived of sleep, sunlight and blood sugar). The man was a ghost.

 

More steps. This time going to the kitchen. Switching the light on, John could hear the fridge open. No doubt more experiments. The hour was absurd, and now he couldn't sleep at all. It wasn't enough that Sherlock was up and thinking so loudly, but now he was parading around in the kitchen doing God-knows-what, and most likely with that head...

 

Still, at least he was being entertained. Usually Sherlock's insomnia (which John had never seen cease) was uneventful and apathetic. What the man (and John used the term loosely, because Sherlock was a child) was to rid his head of the pretense and sleep. Or at least be a quieter insomniac, or thinker.

 

John recalled having sleepless nights due to the terrors that recurred in his sleep. Past visions of what he'd seen that were too real for words. It was only after night of those visions that for a while, John had feared sleep. Falling into it's grasp meant seeing it again. During those periods, though, John had taken to reading sonnets from Shakespeare, and medical journals online. For the most part, they made his dreamer extensively blander, and provided decent material for his blog.

 

When suggesting this to Sherlock, the man had scoffed in that arrogant way of his, and had muttered.  
“And yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare,As any she belied with false compare.”

  
And just walked off.

 

The though made John wonder if perhaps Sherlock had nightmares, also. But the longer he entertained the notion, the more he realized that it was outlandish. Nothing much seemed to even jilt the man, let alone haunt him. Sherlock didn't care for people much at all, and had been around death more than enough times to compose himself.

 

Or had he?  
On reflection, John knew very little about Sherlock. Especially his past. Perhaps it wasn't death that terrified him at all; maybe it was something really irrational; like sleep, or the number eight.  
Though, Jon was a doctor. He was sure that something like that would have been identified.

 

Mycroft Holmes was really the man to talk to, anyway.

 

Again the sound o Sherlock was ringing through the house. John was rather irksome and tired by this point, laying on his back, keeping his eyes on the sparse bullet-holes in the ceiling. The whole aesthetic choices of the room were terrible, and distracting, too. He supposed, at least they weren't boring.

 

Fumbling in the next room. Why couldn't Sherlock just disintegrate quietly?

 

“Bloody hell, Sherlock-”John grumbled, rolling onto his side. Clearly, Sherlock had heard him.

 

And retalliatedby putting on the radio. Loudly. With a horrifying reception.

 

“Sherlock Holmes!” As frustrating as the world's only consulting detective could be, he also had a [not a heart, remember?] soft spot for the good doctor Watson, and the radio silenced.

 

John fell asleep to the calm of Sherlock Holmes' insomnia.


	2. Weird Divide

_the starlight of everything and nothing seemed to expand and collapse in front of the night air, bleeding into the sky and making an elaborate pantomime of normalcy. the longer sherlock stared up into the night air the deeper and deeper the grave he was laying in seemed to get. the muddy walls of the grave grew taller, like giants, and cobbles seemed to pave the way up. browner than the eyes of a good Doctor, wetter than if they were crying. deep in the darkness, sherlock waited, unable to sit up, frozen to the murky, ferny floor. the only light he could make out was the howling moon that reflected on the stone and gave him an idea of just how far down he was, and where. no longer shoulder to shoulder with john, in a grave. he was seven years old once more, and had fallen down the well._

 _"sherlock?" myrcroft was calling. his voice whistled on the wind and rung sheer down the well. guilt came in the torrents that drenched his tone, and rightly so. it was mycroft's fault that sherlock had fallen. now he was still against the ferny floor and terrified, waiting. silent._

 _it was his silence that was most likely getting mycroft cross. the longer he was quiet for, it seemed, the colder he became. a trail of blue blood on his hands betrayed his innocence; sherlock was cold, and he always had been._

 _the night air was thrust into his mouth, and it started a frenzy of wheezed coughs. he wasn't obliged to swallow anything like the cool night air, the object of his contempt. blurry vision made his blue eyes weep like a soul pouring through the pinpricks of his pupils. inside sherlock was ready to cry, because he didn't understand why he was so cold, and why mycroft had sent him down the well._

 _"sherlock!" had mycroft's cries always been so loud? his face must have been rotten red with hoarse anxiety for the trouble he was going to be showered in. never concern for sherlock, god forbid._

 _the stars seemed to fizzle out as sherlock lifted his hands to his heart, his breath warming them slightly. for an second sherlock closed his eyes, and wished his warmth hadn't disappeared. wished that they didn't call him a sullen child. the obscuring silver branches of ailing trees were darkened by the lids of his eyes._

 _sherlock opened them when he felt hands on his own._

 _black rivers swirled within the eyes of another, whom had taken sherlock's hands with great affection and placed them to his lips. nothing held a roman candle to that look in his eyes as he laughed. the night air was different now, it was hot and sticky. sherlock hadn't been on this balcony since he was twenty-two and blonde, with an ailing heart and criminal eyes. in his dreams, the other was still in love._

 _the smile of the other was perfect in so many ways, even after all the years, and the poor reconstruction that sherlock's subconscious had done, the other was a shade of his former self. Hair that was a mystical brown, with a slight curl and eyes so black they could swallow you whole._

 _somewhere off in the distance sherlock was sure he could hear mycroft crying out, forever twelve years old. and even in the swelter of the night air, he felt so very cold._

 _the other was hot. boiling, sweltering, evaporating in the night air. sherlock tried to squirm away from the cumbersome heat that left him feeling delirious and faint. his hands were practically ablaze in the grasp, and sherlock screamed out into the empty air. the effervescent eyes of his other were still black as night but twice as murderous and he appeared to growl low in his throat._

 _a hand snatch through sherlock's compromised sense of state, to his chest. the heart was being burnt out of him._

 _sherlock was howling now, falling into this grave, cursed state of agony beyond which he had not cherished for many years. since being twenty-two and blonde, with an ailing heart and criminal eyes._

 _"sherlock?" mycroft's young voice grew closer, and the pain was blinding. the cosmos collapsed and expanded leaving him alone in the nothingness of the garden well, to drown in the infinite sadness._

-

It was six thirty five in the morning when Sherlock Holmes was pulled violently from his dream by the waking world. The sound of John's breathing in the next room, and the insane mishmash of yells and general chutzpah greatly comforted him. Soho, he decided, was a good place to have nightmares, because the noisy sound of a never-sleeping London was always a steely reminder of what was real and what was otherwise.

Voices sing-songed from the other room, that of John's mostly. The warm and dulcet tones keeping Sherlock's heart at a resting pulse. January is the cruellest month, with a gruelling winter wind raging outside. But Sherlock was sweating, clutching at the pain in his chest with a great flare.

Black eyes remained lit in the back of his head, always there with the promise.  
To burn the heart out of him.

Sherlock showered before facing any company; he didn't feel at all up to dealing with another idiot. Of course, he could make an exception for John. But that's only because he wasn't a complete idiot. While being drenched in the sensational warm water Sherlock tired desperately to calm the pain in his chest that heaved with every breath. His heart wasn't  _his_  anymore. It hadn't been for ten years.

After drying, and dressing, Sherlock found his way into the sitting room, where Mycroft was sat across from John sipping tea and holding his umbrella. That sodding umbrella. For a second, the stare of those stoic brown eyes nailed to the spot. All Sherlock could hear were the crickets of Holmes Manor, and the calling of his name in the dark that rang in the well.

"Sherlock!" John moved casually up on the sofa, and gestured to the seat next to him. "Mycroft was talking about a new case for us," Sherlock sat slowly, suspiciously.

And ignored the tearing pain within his chest


	3. scars

_everything was nothing in the infinite dim of the corridor. a blue light soaked the darkness at the end of the corridor, emanating from the door to the biochemistry room. the light brought sherlock memories of a pain that he couldn't suffer quietly. in the hazy distance of other memories, distorted by time, by perspective and by fear. dying was fine, because it erased things that nobody wanted to remember._

 _the ghosts of people remained there, and sherlock waded through them, his feet covered in moss and shrieking against the linoleum, brown from the murky grave where john was entranced burying himself. wetter than if the saint had shed tears for sherlock, but he was cold, always had been. by the time he came to really die, old and bony, perhaps things would not be otherwise._

 _in the blue of the night, neon like past parties where things were said and people were done, then disposed of like this generation's glass slipper, sherlock's skin was the colour of chaos, and his face was grim. king of the eyesores, ruling over the rest of his past with no remorse. the door sobbed when pushed, defeatedly swinging in on itself to show the purpose of the light._

 _eyes blacker than sherlock's cold heart, the light bluer than his blood, the stuff that betrayed the ignorance of a seven-year-old, freezing in the darkness. a sourness to them, like taking holy water with a pinch of sin. getting taken in the warp of sherlock's refuge, heat on cool ivory and groans, the plead for more. the scars that were left when everything was ruined, and sherlock's head was to the wall, lonely._

 _the tearing, searing pain of sherlock's heart returned. mycroft's cries rang out into the night once more._

 _the room was hazy enough to be underwater and smelt of chlorine, formaldehyde and asbestos. the black eyes were looking at sherlock, stripping away his soul from across the room. not warm; but white hot supernova. eyes that seemed to fizz in this resplendent thermonuclear fusion. wrent sherlock's milky soul in twain, broken open once more. he was twenty-two and blonde._

 _when the black eyes were right across from him, they spoke._

 _"arm," they said. "extend it," sherlock's hesitation had vanished, and within seconds he was blinking, realising that his cold had come undone from the commands of those eyes. an inch or so down from the crease of his elbow sherlock had ownership or an impurity, as it was called. a speck in the skin he'd had since birth. for a few seconds in the chlorine of the room, a hand fondly caressed over it, and those black eyes came closer in a kiss, if only for a moment._

 _before the searing, melting, scorching evaporating pain._

 _a chemical burn, right on the impurity. exterminating it from the raw of sherlock's marble skin. the wound was literally fizzing, burning, melting away at the layers of skin. he was choking now, howling in a frenzied fit. all the while these black eyes remained calm, holding sherlock's spasming body in place._

 _"w-water!" begging. the pain was unbearable. chunks of skin were being dissolved nearly down to a three-quarter inch. raw, red chunks of searing flesh, and that smell. then, sherlock shook his head frantically, the first time he'd been brought to tears, the first time such a heat had set alight his blue heart. "water!" the creaming wasn't his, couldn't have been. the fit shook him, made his throat hoarse, and the blue lights spin._

 _"i know what you did," the black eyes remained so calm, never once blinking, no sympathy. tears were flooding down sherlock's face, and they were thick, and ruddy, most likely blood. "look at me, sherlock. i know what you did."_

 _"i'm sorry, i'm sorry, but i can't-"_

 _"it makes me sick. why should i give you water, sherlock? why?" the pain in his chest got worse. much worse. he tried to hide to pain behind his eyes; tried to meditate; to take his mind away. not to think of the agony._

 _"make it-..christ! make it stop!"_

 _the dark eyes rose, and turned to produce of translucent brown test tube. no longer holding down sherlock's arm, but it remained on the counter as the rest of him spasmed uncontrollably, heaving, dying._

 _in false hope, the test tube was emptied onto the wound._

-

John's hand was neutralising th Lye that sizzled Sherlock's skin when he woke, swimming in the covers, slick with sweat and sobbing, literally. In the sudden-consciousness, he could not control himself and leant forward, gasping, and vomited onto the sheets. They were seen to within seconds. Dizzy with fear, Sherlock went to stand, but his legs were weak, and the adrenalin was damaging his sytem. Just as he toe the nictone patch from his arm, he had fallen down hard.

That was seen to within seconds, too. Upon waking, the windows of Sherlock room had been opened to full capacity, with a glass of ice water resting n the night stand. There was a present warmth to the right of the bed, where the sheets had been discarded and a silent man sat. His eyes were like the vinegar that stopped that pain, deep in the brown of them was this overwhelming concern. Something Sherlock had long thought to dissassosiate with closeness,or companionship.

He had been wrong.

"What do you dream?" The real affection in John's voice was layered in this unreadable calm. The calm of his cobalt vinegar eyes and lips that sat squarely against eachother, always knowing what to say.

By instinct, Sherlock's trembling hands flew to where his nicotine patch had been, covering the scar from about an inch or so from the crease of his elbow. There was a plaster over it, hiding the impurity.

"Memories." Sherlock tried to laugh, but the sound was unfamiliar to his own ears.

"Memories?" John's eyes wandered to Sherlock's plaster with great apprehension.

"Scars." There was a sliver of minty starlight ringing out from a gap in the curtains, where they shook softly against the open windows. The sky was as black as those eyes, and the pain in Sherlock's chest got worse.

"I...I saw men die before. In Afghanistan. It used to haunt me. Didn't think I'd ever sleep again." The vinegar eyes seemed to spill over into this sea of utter calm. John wasn't smiling, but his warm, his essence, was perhaps more comforting at that time. "I haven't dreamt of being a soldier since...well,, since moving here."

The chimes that hung from the curtain rain rattle together in the breeze. The silence was peaceful, enough so that the Doctor was allowed in; to lean over and steal Sherlock's hand. Not the lips, like Sherlock had dreamt, but he found himself coiling up slightly, out of interest. The feeling of John's tender hands reminded Sherlock that he was safe; reinforced the idea that John's eyes were like vinegar; they weren't back, and they didn't sting like Lye.

"I saw your arm," John confessed, sounding all the guiltier for it. Tensing, Sherlock knew what to expect. People always assumed incorrectly; that it was child abuse, sexual abuse. Something that he had no way of preventing. In reality, it had been all his fault.

"Don't be-"

"You don't have to tell me, Sherlock. It doesn't matter." The fire in Sherlock chest cavity had dwindled sufficiently and he was left peacefully to hold John's hand. It wasn't like the other nightmares, because the Doctor's hand were tender, and warm, and you could feel the steady pulse that jumped beneath the greying skin.

after a while, in a small voice Sherlock spoke.

"I don't' want to fall asleep. I'll see it again," Those cobalt vinegar eyes nodded. They understood.

"I'll wake you if you drift off. Pour water on you or something,"

In the evening, Sherlock fell asleep four times, and on each occasion John woke him gently. When he did sleep, however; there were no more memories, or dreams.

No more scars.


End file.
